PORT ST. LUCIE, FL \u2013 A police K9 bloodhound named Hoot came to the rescue after a 13-year-old Florida boy disappeared.<\/p>\n
Port St. Lucie police bodycam video captured the moment when officer Robert Burdick and K9 Hoot found a missing 13-year-old autistic boy in Fort Pierce.<\/p>\n
The boy had finished a workout at Live Well Fitness Center on US1 and was waiting by the car when within seconds, he vanished at about 5:20 in the evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had walked out of the door normally, as he always does, and in seconds, he was gone,\u201d fitness center owner Nicholas Burgos said.<\/p>\n
Fort Pierce police searched on foot and used a drone, eventually calling Port St. Lucie police and their K9 Hoot. After sniffing a piece of the boy\u2019s clothing, the bloodhound started searching.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are picking up that odor, that scent, whether it\u2019s sweat, things of that nature,\u201d Port St. Lucie\u2019s Brittany McNally said. \u201cThey have a much better keen sense of smell than humans do.\u201d<\/p>\n
After picking up the boy\u2019s scent, K9 Hoot took the officers right to the boy. He was found around 7 p.m. about a mile from the gym in the woods alongside railroad tracks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely incredible. Who doesn\u2019t love a good canine story with a great outcome and reuniting that family with that child?\u201d McNally said. \u201cThis is just a great, great outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The boy was found within two hours, but that\u2019s not always the case. Advocates say children with autism wander away often and the situation can turn dangerous quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ecstatic,\u201d Project Lifesaver International\u2019s Gene Saunders said. \u201cAs long as they\u2019re found safely, whatever method they use, I think it\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saunders, founder and CEO of Project Lifesaver International, a nonprofit organization that supplies devices to law enforcement agencies to help track and locate people with autism or dementia, says parents of autistic children need to be extra cautious.<\/p>\n
\u201cAutistic children can go in an instant for a lot of different reasons,\u201d Saunders said. \u201cI think the best thing that the parent can do is be aware of your child at all times, know where they are. You need to do as much as possible as often as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE, FL \u2013 A police K9 bloodhound named Hoot came to the rescue after a 13-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-183631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}